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Darren vs Darryl

American parents have registered 104,506 Darrens since 1880, against 93,419 Darryls. Darren is still ahead, with 187 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Darren against Darryl, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Darren Darryl

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 112 years in which either name was published, Darren for 61 years and Darryl for 51 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Darren Darryl
Total US births 104,50693,419
Most in one year 5,9635,178
Babies in 2025 18769
Estimated living today 94,00075,000
Median age today 4959
Peak year 19651961
Best rank 52nd boys80th boys
Rank in 2025 1,132nd2,108th
First recorded 19361913
Girls / boys 569 / 103,9371,134 / 92,285

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Darryls alive today are over 59; half the Darrens are over 49. That is 10 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Darren Darryl
Ireland 10,418266
Scotland 8,913450
New Zealand 3,1431,517
England and Wales 3,069419
France 1,320355
Northern Ireland 45990
Belgium 496

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Darren and Darryl.